Talulah Mankiller at Life Under a Rock: Just the Facts, Ma’am (via Kiri) (post mentions domestic violence but doesn’t describe)

Even when I was very sick and had no idea what was wrong, I always had two versions of reality in my head: what I logically knew was actually probably going on, and what I emotionally understood was happening. The two rarely matched up, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t both there. For years, various people made futile efforts to help me “grow up” and “learn to deal with things” by trying to get those two versions of reality to overlap as much as possible, but the fact of the matter is that they were never going to. Because those kind people, those lovely people, thought if I just understood that another, less emotionally volatile reality existed, then I would just magically walk right over there and everything would be fine.

Problem was, I’d been well aware of that reality the whole time. I just couldn’t reach it. Because, you know, MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY IS FUCKED.

Because I’m fucking exhausted, that’s why. Depression means I don’t have much energy to begin with, and I have to use most of what I do have for school, work and social situations, which doesn’t leave much over to do activism or to be angry about shit. Oh, and I’m also trans, which means I have to constantly fight just to be seen as human (and usually fail). And I try to squeeze creative projects in amidst all this because that’s how I keep from killing myself.

A centuries-old sign language thought to have been spread throughout America by Kentish settlers is on the worldwide endangered list.

Evidence of the use of Old Kentish Sign Language dates back as far as the mid-1600s, but is now thought to be extinct thanks to the rise of British Sign Language in its place.

It is also thought to be one of the forerunners of American Sign Language, as a number of 17th century settlers on the island of Martha’s Vineyard near Massachusetts – the majority of whom knew how to sign – migrated from the Kentish Weald.

The findings come in a report released Thursday by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics that looked at 730,000 nonfatal violent crimes during 2008 in which the victim had a disability. Overall, those with disabilities age 12 and older experienced crime at a rate of 40 cases out of 1,000. During the same period those without a disability were affected at a far lower rate of 21 per 1,000, the findings indicate.

There are more than 300,000 Australians who are deafblind and an Access Economics report is predicting that with an ageing population that figure will top one million by 2050. The 7.30 Report’s Natasha Johnson spent a day with a woman who is deafblind to witness the many challenges she faces.

Black and white advertising image. On the right is a man standing behind a podium that has US flags, his eyes covered with SLOGAN OBSESSED. On the right is the text: Labels get in the way. Disabilities rarely do. Learn the truth. Think Beyond The Label.com Photo courtesy of Kate in DC.

A few signal-boosting calls to action that people, especially those in the US, may want to participate in.

And one other thing, I don’t want to pay any more for my smartphone than anybody who has a Blackberry, Droid, or iPhone. I don’t believe I should have to pay extra for a screen reader, like TALKS or MobileSpeak. I don’t mind paying for apps that maximize my capabilities, like GPS or the Kindle app, because everybody pays for those. But everybody doesn’t pay extra for the opportunity to read what’s on the screen!

When I go to meetings with sighted colleagues, I find they are connected in real-time to their smart phones. Ask them a question like, “What does a First Class stamp cost?” (I can never remember…), or “What should the temperature of a medium-rare burger be? — and they can respond, literally, in seconds! That’s because they can see the screen, so they don’t need spoken output to access the information, giving them immediate access to answers.

Mad Catz, makers of many PS3 modded controllers, supplies the circuit boards to Broadened Horizons for several of its accessible controllers. These controllers are responsible for allowing severely disabled gamers with no dexterity or hand movement at all to use their PlayStation 3. Normal OEM controllers require lots of finger movement and hand strength while Broadened Horizons’ controllers allow for little or no movement at all.

Suddenly, and without warning, several of these motor impaired gamers were locked out of their favorite activity.

Silence when it comes to mental illness is a killer, a killer of self esteem, hope, and emotional safety. Silence mixed with stigma is painful and is a cause for those living with Mental Illness to separate ourselves from the world around us. Rarely does a person living with mental illness speak out to identify with or protect others traveling down our own road, because the fear of being stigmatized by others is a constant shroud that covers us. We have all faces stigma, either self imposed or from a external source, both feed each other and keep us in so many ways from reaching our potential.

One thing that struck me when reading RMJ’s post was that, like the mythology that surrounds Dissociative Identity Disorder has roots in the truth, most of those negative connotations of the word “crazy” spring from reality, however distant. In light of that, I understand why Natasha Tracy and others choose to embrace the word. Why not call a duck a duck? The problem as I see it is that while most of us reserve the word “duck” exclusively for referencing actual ducks, we don’t use “crazy” in the same way. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s used in positive or negative ways. If, from this day forward, we all used that word only to mean (1) stunningly awesome, or (2) mentally ill, it would still irk me. Because if your boyfriend is crazy hot, DID isn’t crazy. And if DID is crazy, your boyfriend isn’t crazy hot.

For that’s exactly what this felt like to me – an assault. It was a direct, physical affront to my person. This man wasn’t just messing with some piece of equipment. He was interfering with my mobility, my power to position myself, to go where I want. My wheelchair is a part of my means of being in the world. In other words, it was part of me that he grabbed – my wheelchair, my body, myself.

Would anyone else recognize this? If I had tried to charge him with assault, would the legal system have supported me? Were other passengers aware of the depth of this violation? Or did they accept his statement that he was “helping” me?

Her take is that it’s a moral thing and that it’s to be done to prevent suffering. She does then go on to say that there are millions of disabled people who live “Marvellous” lives but there are also thousands of millions who are suffering and not live no kind of life.

She’d do it to a child she really loved and she doesn’t know any mother wouldn’t. I personally am very glad that according to Ms Ironside’s views my own mother can’t love me and must be a terrible mother.

I do have to change my cat’s diet and routine a bit. One thing that is always time intensive is when new tasks get added to the schedule around here. I have a limited number of care hours. Anything that goes over those hours gets added to what I have to do with adaptive devices. That can drain energy I need to work.

So I start by trying to figure out ways to do the new tasks using assistive devices. If I can’t or if the energy it will take won’t work, I add it to what others do and have to pick out something they are doing that I can take on. There are only so many care hours and since I also use them also to help me get my work done, it takes a lot of planning and resourcefulness on everyone’s part.